The 126 combat wing force will, as we see it now, give us this power and carrying capacity. It is very important to our continued safety that we build it.

After my general presentation General Vandenberg will discuss the 126 combat wing force in some detail. Mr. GilpatGilpatric will discuss production. General Stone, Deputy Chief of Staff, Comptroller, will explain the problem of fund administration and will describe certain steps which are being taken to improve management procedures. General Odom will then discuss the program from the operating point of view and will be followed by General Asensio who will present its financial implications.

NEED FOR THE 126 COMBAT WING FORCE

We recognize that the amount which the Air Force is asking for is large and would put a heavy strain on our economy. The figure, however, has been very carefully screened in the Department of Defense and by the Bureau of the Budget. The Secretary of Defense in his recent appearance before this committee described the reductions which were made in the initial budget requests of the three services.

The largest items in the $20.7 billion total are the two items amounting to $12.3 billion for major procurement—a very substantial part of which can properly be regarded as on capital account. The second largest are the current items of maintenance and operation of $4.4 billion and of military personnel requirements of $3.3 billion. Research and development is next with $525 million.

It will thus be seen that the biggest amount is being spent for capital equipment, mostly aircraft, needed to get the build-up started toward a very great increase in the striking power of the Air Force.

The basis for this build-up to the 126 combat wing force is a decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff taken in the month of October 1951. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the principal military advisers to the Secretary of Defense and the President, arrived at unanimous agreement as to the force requirements for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, and transmitted this recommendation through the Secretary of Defense to the National Air Council. It thus has the highest sanction of those whose responsibility it is to advise in these matters. The broad purposes of the 126 combat wing force are as follows: The 126 combat wings are divided among the three front line fighting operations of the Air Force-the strategic operation, the air defense operation, and the tactical air operation. The figures established for the strategic air command under the 126 combat wing force are the result of the most careful study by the strategic air command itself and by the air staff of the requirements of a few years from now of the strategic operation.

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I do not have to mention to this committee how important we consider this strategic operation to be. It is a major deterrent to war, It must at all costs be built up and maintained at a level which will leave no doubt of its ability, not only now but in the conditions of the future, to carry out its mission if it is called upon to do so. .composition of the strategic air command, which I ask permission to discuss a little more in detail at the end of this formal statement, constitutes a force which the Air Force believes to be indispensable for the success of the strategic mission.

We have an especial concern for this strategic operation. The great emphasis which possible enemies are placing upon their air; defense system, not only in the building of fine types of interceptor planes but also on the development of antiaircraft artillery, radar, and the like, has shown that they recognize the deterrent power of this strategic air command. General Vandenberg and I feel especially. strongly that this command should have not only the numbers of planes which are necessary for it to do its work but also it should have planes of the right quality.

In putting emphasis on the strategic air operation, I do not wish to give you the impression that we do not place great emphasis on the other two missions.

The task of the air defense command-that is, to defend this country against hostile bomber attack-is obviously something of the very, greatest importance to this country. The number of wings recom-mended for the air defense command over the previously authorized. force has been substantially increased.

The fighter interceptors will not all be assigned to the continental United States. Some of them will be in Alaska and in the Northeast and some of them will be for the defense of overseas bases. It is the position of the Air Force that the number of wings we are asking for the defense of the continental United States is the minimum which is required.

The problems of tactical air are tied into those of the Army. Tactical air has to operate where the Army operates, and the main place for which Army deployment plans are made at the moment is in connection with the NATO force. That part of the 126 combat wing force which is assigned to tactical air is sufficient (1) to take care of the arrangements currently being made for the deployment of United States air wings to the NATO air force, and (2) for deployment of planes to the far eastern area (on the assumption that the Korean war will have ended).

The plans for the NATO ground, sea, and air force are of course not alone of our making. We can decide for ourselves what we want to put into the strategic air command and the air defense command, but in the planning for the tactical air arm we are working with our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty area in the creation of an international force. It is therefore possible that this figure of wings : which are assigned to the tactical air operation may vary in the future. The present tactical force structure, however, is the one which, i as I have said, is based on our present arrangements with our NATO partners in Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the 126 combat wing force, as now ; planned, represents a force which under all the circumstances and granting the limitations which nonmilitary considerations must put upon it, is an appropriate force. Its basic purpose is to have an air arm in being, ready to go at a moment's notice, of the proper quantity and quality so that any possible enemy would realize that this was a very strong force indeed to contend with and for that reason would not think it wise to begin a war. This is the purpose of the force and I believe as recommended it should accomplish this result. But I do feel that this force has been most thoroughly screened and that any diminution in it would be most unwise.

The time factor must also be considered. When will this new force be ready?

The Secretary of Defense has said to you that, after the recommendations of the Department of Defense to the Bureau of the Budget and the President, certain further adjustments were made for the purpose of keeping expenditures for the military departments and for military end items financed under the mutual security program below the figure of $60 billion during fiscal year 1953. The result was a stretch-out in the period in which readiness is to be attained. This affects all three of the Air Force's front-line operations of which I have spoken.

This stretch-out does not attain the number of units with modern equipment as early as the military chiefs of the services, from a purely military point of view, consider desirable. However, as the Secretary of Defense has said to you, the budget before you represents a judgment by the executive branch of the Government which takes into consideration all the factors involved-not just the military factorsand arrives at a balance which appears best for the long-term security of the Nation. Moreover, this judgment was made after a full statement of the calculated risk involved in this stretch-out in production and the consequent extension of the dates on which the services will be modernized in their equipment.

PRODUCTION PROBLEMS

Mr. Gilpatric will deal with the question of production in some detail, but I shall mention certain broad aspects of the problem.

First, I want to make it clear that we place great emphasis on the quality of our machines in the Air Force. And our insistence on quality affects our production. I think, however, that the policy which we are following is the correct one.

There is a danger that we may become complacent on this question of the quality of our military machines. We have the greatest industrial power in the world in this country and that fact in itself may tend to make us not pay the attention to quality that we should.

The matter of deciding how good a plane should be is one of selective judgment. For example, I often hear the questions asked: Aren't we putting too many gadgets in our planes? Aren't we loading them up with too many complicated and expensive instruments? Wouldn't it be better to have a greater number of less high-quality aircraft?

In the broad fields of the strategic air, air defense, and tactical air, it would be a dangerous policy, I believe, to rely on numbers as opposed to quality.

We are in the midst of the greatest revolution in applied science for destruction in history. The most sensational development in this field is the atomic bomb. But the revolution also goes on in other fields. The jet engine is developing by leaps and bounds and may be followed by nuclear propulsion. Electronics are in a stage of rapid development. When you add these all together you have a situation in which the changes in military destructiveness are taking place faster than at any previous time.

From this fact itself it follows that there must be an especially high premium on quality. With the way things stand today it becomes

very important to have the best equipment and training, or at least just as good equipment and training as anyone else.

I have already referred to the emphasis which possible enemies are placing upon their air defense. The corollary of this is obvious; namely, that we must place a corresponding emphasis upon the machines which may have to deal with these air defenses.

The same need for quality is apparent for our own air defense. With modern weapons of the violence of the atomic bomb in the hands of possible enemies, it seems clear that we should concentrate most heavily upon the quality of the machines which might have to deal with enemy bombers which would carry these dreadful weapons.

The same is true in the tactical field. General Vandenberg will no doubt go into the tactical operation in some detail with you, but I would point out that as these new weapons become available we must see to it that we are able to deliver them most effectively.

Indeed we have an object lesson which should teach us not to be too complacent about the quality of our machines, and that is the excellent quality of the MIG-15. Again General Vandenberg will discuss this in some detail with you, if you wish, but I would point out that the fact that the other countries can make planes of this quality and can make them in quantity is something which should make us pause before we standardize too soon upon our production models. Even at the cost of delay in turning out numbers of aircraft we should, I believe, incorporate those changes which will assure our crews that they have as good, or preferably better, machines than those with which they would have to deal.

There is also another factor which I will refer to briefly, and that is the matter of safety. I think that our safety standards are higher than those of some countries. As one example, we use double cable controls in all our combat aircraft. This complicates the airplane. On the other hand, it gives our crews a better chance in the event that one set of the controls is knocked out by enemy action.

We cannot, of course, go to the extreme of putting every technical development, as it is made, into every machine produced. We must draw a balance between getting a force in being in time and obtaining the ultimate in technical quality. An air staff agency has been established in the Washington headquarters of the Air Force to which all but the most minor proposals for improvements or modifications in existing aircraft, whether coming from Wright Field or aircraft manufacturers, must be submitted before they are incorporated. We hope that this system will produce the proper balance between overcomplexity and a failure to get the right quality in our machines.

LEAD TIME

There is another question of production I shall discuss briefly. That is the long time it takes to get planes produced. Or, more specifically, the answer to the question why the Air Force, having gotten appropriations from the Congress in fiscal year 1951, hasn't been able to get planes more rapidly than it has. This gets us into the difficult question of lead time.

The reason why we have not gotten planes rolling off the production lines in great quantity at the moment is that we only started on the build-up toward the 95 wing force (80 combat wings plus 15 troop

carriers) during the fiscal year 1951. Four separate appropriations were made to the Air Force during that fiscal year-on September 6. 1950, September 27, 1950, January 6, 1951, and May 31, 1951. If you take the average date of these appropriations as being around December 1950, it would appear that even with a lead time of 18 months, the date when production should result from these appropriations would be 18 months from December 1950, or June 1952.

However, there has been a good deal of optimism in the calculations on lead time. It isn't possible to give any figure which will hold for all types of planes because it obviously takes longer to build the big heavy bombers and the medium bombers than it does to build the fighters and the interceptors; and the trainers and lighter planes can be produced even more quickly. I think, however, that if you take an average of 24 months for the lead-time factor you will be nearer the realistic time.

Let me define what I mean by lead time. It used to be said that it took 7 years to bring an airplane from the drawing board to the completed article coming out the factory doors; and this time has probably increased with the complexity of the modern machine.

I am not now speaking of the time to get a new model into production. I am talking of reorders-reorders that is of standardized accepted aircraft, the models of which are already flying around in the sky.

Moreover, when I am speaking of lead time, I am talking only of the time between the placement of the order with the manufacturer and the time when the plane rolls out the factory door. There is some more time involved on each end of the spectrum. There is time between the congressional appropriation and the placing of the contract. Then, too, there is the "shake-down" time after the plane has come out of the factory door-the time to move it to where it belongs, the time to get it into a unit, and very often the time during which it is sent back to the modification center for changes.

Add these all up and you get a very long time between the date of the congressional appropriation and the time when you can expect to have the airplane in the unit. It certainly goes far beyond the month of January 1952.

As I have said, 24 months is a good average on which to base one's calculations as to lead time. But I think it proper to say that even this figure may be on the short side.

Strenuous efforts must be made to cut down the time it takes to build aircraft and get them into units. But there are real obstacles in the way of a rapid and drastic shortening of this time.

That lead time is long for aircraft is, it seems to me, the result of three factors. First, the complexity of the modern airplane and the importance of having them of high quality. Second, the fact that we are in a stage of build-up during which the necessary processing and machine tools have to be gotten and all the great complex of component production as well as prime production has to be brought into motion. Third, we are doing all this, not in a time of all-out war and full mobilization, but on a partial mobilization basis which we may have to sustain for a long period of time.

These are serious obstacles and it will take a great deal of effort to overcome, or even to reduce to a proper measure, their delaying effect.